A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

"Luck of the Devil, that'un," Peel spat. "Uncanny, ain't it."

"Gotta fall off, sir!" Spenser announced, as the tartane came careening in toward their bows. Jester was doing about six knots and the tartane no more than four, her close-trimmed lateen yards strained and her sails flat-bellied the way her crew had left them, scudding to a beam-reach by then, heeled over by the unnatural press of wind.

"Cease fire, Mister Crewe!" Lewrie groaned in defeat. The guns were masked as Jester had to turn away from the coast, out of range of even his rifled Ferguson he'd kept since his escape from Yorktown. It came up from his cabins with Andrews, just a half minute too late!

Gun crews leapt from the waist to scramble up on the gangway as the tartane fell alongside. There was a shiver and scrape, a thud, as the hulls met. But Spenser and Brauer had judged it to a nicety, laid Jester parallel to the collision, and falling off the wind had slowed her to almost a match.

"He's going to get away," Lewrie griped. "Again!"

"Sir, you recall the orders you received," Peel snapped, stony and crisply military again, and fearfully impatient to complete Mister Twigg's bidding to him. "To render me every and all assistance to take or kill Captain Choundas."

"Christ, yes, Mister Peel, but…"

"Can't count on the Genoese holding him, sir," Peel rapped out. "Can't count on him runnin' into an Austrian cavalry patrol, and being took, sir. The village may have horses. He could ride west, till he's in the French lines. You must land me at once, sir. Me, and any men of your crew who're horsemen, to pursue him. This minute, sir!"

"Sailors who can ride, my God…" Lewrie sighed, looking about the deck. Knolles, being a country gentleman, had his hand up. So did his clerk, Mountjoy. Cony could, but he couldn't spare the bosun.

"This minute, sir!" Peel demanded. "There's not a jot o' time to waste!"

"Mister Knolles, you are in command, sir," Lewrie snapped, taking the Ferguson and its accoutrements from Andrews. "Mister Mountjoy, I hope you ride better than you scribble?"

"Country hunts and steeplechasing, sir." Mountjoy swore.

"Andrews, fetch my pistols. Both pair, for me and Mister Mountjoy," Lewrie decided. "My hanger, and the Frog smallsword. Bring 'em to the larboard gangway, midships. Cony, grapnels! Keep the tartane alongside for a minute! You have money to rent or buy mounts, Mister Peel?"

"Some, sir."

"Got me purse on me, sir," Buchanon offered. " 'Bout twenty or so pound, an' change."

"God bless you, Mister Buchanon." Lewrie smiled. "Mister Knolles, you will stand out to sea to clear the headland, then enter Vado Bay to report to Captain Nelson. Hyde should be along, sooner or later, you should recover him and his crew, and wait our return. Well, let's go, then. 'Board the tartane. She's trimmed for a beat, and that'll take us ashore."

"Spare hands, sir?" Knolles asked.

"Not for what I have to do, no, Mister Knolles." Lewrie smiled grimly, trotting to the gangway entry port to scramble down the battens to the main chains. "God speed, sir. And don't muck up my ship."

"God speed to you, too, sir," Knolles replied, suddenly feeling a lot older than his years.

CHAPTER

The tartane dribbled down Jester's side as she got a way on her, with Lewrie alone on the quarterdeck, shoving the helm hard over to the starboard corner, alee, to force her back onto the wind. Mountjoy and Peel sorted out weaponry below the ladders, amidships; a souvenir from Lewrie's Florida adventure in '83, a long-barreled.54 Cal. fusil musket, and a French cavalry musketoon, six brace of assorted dragoon, pocket or naval pistols, and their various reloads.

Finally, clear oн Jesters side, falling astern, and turning up to use the wind, instead of being wafted aimless by it. He eased the tiller sweep as Peel came to the quarterdeck, complete with a battered-looking saber and scabbard at his hip. They both gazed shoreward, as Choundas's rowing boat cocked and surged over the beginnings of feeble breakers within fifty yards of the beach, another quarter-mile inshore.

"Hell of a lead on us." Peel grimaced, baring his horsey teeth. "Village around the point, 'bout another quarter-mile, I recall. We'll sail around and put in there, I take it?"

"Thought we'd do things direct, Mister Peel," Lewrie said, with a humorless laugh. "He's lame. He can't scamper too far. Or quick."

Lewrie swung the tartanes bows a touch off the wind, her decks canting over a mite more, but making more speed, as if he was aiming to shave the point by the thinnest of hairs, east of where Choundas would ground.

"Ah, land us 'twixt him and town, so he can't get a horse," Mister Peel supposed aloud.

"Something like that," Lewrie agreed.

"But, uhm…" Peel demured, "we don't have a rowboat. They…"

"We have a boat, properly speaking, sir." Lewrie beamed, humming to himself. "Why I didn't want any extra hands along. Bit iffy, this. But you said 'this instant,' so, 'this instant' it'll be. Looks steep-to, around there, not so much sand in the shallows so we'd not reach the shore. Yon rocky notch? Maybe six feet of water within musket shot of the shingle. Remind Mountjoy to keep his powder dry, sir. When we hit, and when we go over the bow."

"Good God, you…!" Peel went quite pale. "I can't swim that…"

"Mister Peel, I can't swim at all!" Lewrie hooted, grinning at him maliciously, happy to be getting some of his own back. "Just lie back, grit your teeth… and think of England, hey?"

"You're daft, you're…!" Peel gasped.

Lewrie put the tiller hard-over for the shore. He looked about for the rowboat; it was already ashore, abandoned, bows grinding upon the strand. A flash of white shirt on a rocky path above the beach was the tail end of the escapees, scrambling around the point to the village where they could blend in with their fellow Genoese, perhaps prop their feet up in an osteria, sip some wine, and pretend to be simple fishermen. Choundas, though…! He hadn't a hope, except to find a way to hide or flee. And if there were troops in the village, as Peel seemed to recall, they might persuade them to remember their "neutrality" and hunt for the French officer who violated it.

"Dear Lord, sir!" Mountjoy screeched as he learned what Lewrie had in mind, as the tartane arrowed in toward the beach.

"Hang on!" Alan warned. They were back up to at least five knots. Rocks were visible underwater to windward as she went in at a sixty-degree angle. There was a shudder as she scraped over something, a slither of sand, then a thunderous roaring and groaning as her bow and forefoot planking tore away, as her keel shattered forrud, and stout ribs of her hull timbers almost exploded into kindling! Her bow pitched high, then came crashing down again, she canted to starboard amid the shrieking of her masts and yards, stays, taut halliards and sheets twanging and snapping loud as gunshots, as everything came down in ruin!

Her motion came to a stop in an eye-blink, throwing everyone off their feet. Lewrie fetched up at the forward edge of the quarterdeck, rolling over to get back upright, and regretting his precipitate action just a tad; after all, she'd been a pretty little thing, worth a pretty penny at the Prize Court. For all the good that would have done him if his previous experiences with those thieves was anything to go by.

The tartane was firmly aground, canted hard-over to starboard and wrecked beyond repair, her forward third splayed open and her back broken, with her long outthrust rectangular Dago-fashion bowsprit platform hanging over the top of the surf line and some shallow rock pools. When the wind did come from seaward later in the day, she'd grind and pound to death, until she resembled a dead whale, all spine and ribs.

"Well, let's go ashore!" Lewrie urged, trotting forward to find some loose bights of line to ease their scramble down the starboard end of the sprit platform to shin-deep water.

There were no troops in the village. Peel's and Mountjoy's fluent Italian gathered that much from the locals; they'd ridden off a day before. No, no smugglers had come ashore, signores, they were assured; only honest fishermen and herders, here. Though more than a few tarry sorts eyed the heavily armed trio nervously from the lone tavern's windows or doorway. A uniformed man, si si, signores, and very ugly, he'd come but he had gone quickly; hired a horse and ridden off, too. Their village didn't attract many visitors, and they rarely stayed for long in any event. Horses? Si, signores, there is a man who has horses to buy, they are "molto costoso" … very expensive, they were told, with many villagers rubbing their fingers together in a universally understood sign.

"Bloody rejects," Peel said, as he pawed a chocolate gelding's chest for defects. "Austrian, Genoese, maybe French… sound-enough, once, I s'pose. Girth galls and saddle sores, almost healed? Cavalry remounts. Stolen, I shouldn't wonder. Maybe this bastard's fattening 'em up to sell back, later."

"No matter," Lewrie snapped, impatient for a gotch-eyed, gangly ostler lad to put saddle and pad on the likely dun mare he'd picked. "He admits he sold a horse to Choundas? He recognizes our description?"

"Yessir, best of his lot," Peel replied, doing his own saddling. "Our boy, 'Brutto Faccia' was here, right enough. Paid in gold, didn't quibble. Didn't wait for change, either. Now, price he asked for ours you'd think we'd just bought blooded Arabians, 'stead o' these. In the Household Cavalry, we'd deem these Welsh coal-pit ponies."

"I had a pony once." Mountjoy crooned to his choice to calm her as he sat her back, already mounted. "Bit me, rather often, he did."

"Paid for information, too, this brute tells me," Peel went on, kneeing his horse to tighten the girth. "Don't hold yer breath, damnye. So we had to, as well. There's the coast road… east to Vado, or west to Finale, pick it up 'bout a mile inland. Another road at the junction… goes inland, northwest." Peel swung up into his saddle and leaned down to adjust his off-side stirrup.

"Which did he take, does this fellow know?" Lewrie pressed, as he swung a leg over, his Ferguson rifle muzzle-down across his back.

"Asked about Austrians," Peel said, sitting upright. "I doubt this man really ever knew, but he told him there had been Austrians on the Finale road, to the west. That much gold gettin' slung about, he told him anything he wished to hear, more than like. But I can't remember reports of Austrian patrols this far away from Vado. I wager he took the northwest road, inland. For certain, the French Army is that way. Let's go. Catch him up before he finds them."

They set off at a brisk trot, posting in their saddles, finding Latin saddles' high pommels and backs awkward. The horses were awkward, too, too long unexercised and fractious; taken too soon from their period of recuperation to be strong. The road junction was uphill all the way, less than a mile, but their mounts were already breathing hard.

A quick halt for Peel to study clues in the wheel ruts and hoofprints that went in every direction, those partly obliterated by boot marks of the soldiers who'd left the village.